I promised a post on the anniversaries I eluded to so here it is. Although, I have to mention this first: something happened to my computer and I lost EVERYTHING document/picture/music wise. It’s really kinds of weird. If anyone has a clue how I can get them back, please let me know. I am pretty sure it is all gone forever…and it is the pictures that break my heart. All my important documents are burned on CDs and what I lost wasn’t totally important, but I did lose part 3 and the beginning of part 4 of my ED articles for YMX, I lost my resume and some other stuff I was in the process of burning onto CD. I lost everything on iTunes. THAT is a killer.
I had emailed Rob about the dates and when he asked me about them yesterday I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. Seven years ago yesterday, I spent a few hours in the ER talking my way OUT of being admitted to the psych ward after a half hearted suicide attempt. Half hearted may not be the right words. More of…part way through I snapped out of whatever zone I was in and stopped. It was a definite if one Prozac is good then several more must be better, didn’t put any real thought into it thing. It seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. Get up, go to church, call my mom and grandmother and tell them Happy Mother’s Day, hang up and take a bunch of pills.
It was impulsive and yet and the same time I lied to Marc when I walked out his door for the next to the last time and told him I was safe when I knew it wasn’t true. It kind of became a thing the last few weeks…verbally contracting for safety. To my “credit,” I did call him later and told him I lied…but that I was OK. It’s not like he didn’t know I was constantly counting my Prozac leading up to what happened. I told him. My guess is I figured if I talked about it, it might prevent me from actually doing anything about it.
Seven years later I have no clue what I feel about it. Part of the time I am really glad I snapped out of it because there are things the last seven years I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Part of the time I could kick myself for snapping out of it and absolutely wish if I hadn’t carried it out then that I would have in 2003.
It hasn’t 100% occupied my thoughts and I am still not sure if I feel regret about not doing enough to kill myself that day or not. You’d think I’d have more to say this far removed from the whole thing…but I don’t.
The other anniversary is Thursday. It will have been seven years since my last session with Marc. I guess that is where I regret a lot of things…mainly for really clamming up for almost five months. Not that I didn’t talk in that time…but the day he told he’d be leaving we might as well have quit seeing him then. He knew how absolutely devastated I was, he knew that I couldn’t deal with it and, for better or worse, he allowed me to rely on the written word to tell him all that. The second he tried to bring the subject up I would shut down. Stupid and immature I know…but I didn’t know how to handle it. I still maintain telling me 5 months before the fact was not the smartest thing to do and I would love to know his thinking.
I really try and not paint that time all nice and rosy because it wasn’t. There were days I pretty much plopped down on the couch and simply wanted to sleep because I was exhausted. I guess the no food and at times exercising my head off will do that to a person. I remember once he told me that was OK and if I needed to sleep I could sleep…but really couldn’t do that and have him watch me sleep for an hour! I ended up in the ER pretty much once a month the whole time I saw him for one reason or another. When he suggested meds the evaluation I went through at Kaiser was awful. I put him off for months and after what happened, I probably should have kept blowing the suggestion off!
But, for all the “red flags” that supposedly were there (according to my therapist when I went to Remuda the first time)…there are a few things that I will be eternally grateful for:
1. He took me on when even though I told him I was pretty much forced to be there and was only about 30% sure I wanted to be there.
2. He didn’t expect me to give up any behaviors until I was ready. This may have been not such a good thing, but didn’t seem any different than what my friends’ therapists were doing. Obviously the goal is to stop, but at that point, there would have been no way I could have stopped. I managed around 12 days (in a row) at one point, but that was it.
3. He instinctively knew when I needed a call. There were a few occasions where I hadn’t called him (hadn’t needed to really) and he called me. The two times that stand out are before the icky evaluation at Kaiser. I was really anxious and about 11 PM my phone rings. Considering I wasn’t falling asleep until 2 or 3 in the morning it figures it was the one night I fell asleep early! Just before he left to go out of town Easter 2000 he told me not to isolate. My car was in the shop and so that really impacted what I could do and where I could go except for Easter stuff with Gina’s family. Over the weekend he called me from wherever he and his family were for Easter to check up on me.
You’d think seven years later I’d be over it. It’s been a long time and I wouldn’t trade Rob for anything. In fact, the last couple years the date has come in gone and I have thought about it, but it hasn’t had me on edge, anxious, shaky…whatever it is that’s going on.
I had emailed Rob about the dates and when he asked me about them yesterday I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. Seven years ago yesterday, I spent a few hours in the ER talking my way OUT of being admitted to the psych ward after a half hearted suicide attempt. Half hearted may not be the right words. More of…part way through I snapped out of whatever zone I was in and stopped. It was a definite if one Prozac is good then several more must be better, didn’t put any real thought into it thing. It seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. Get up, go to church, call my mom and grandmother and tell them Happy Mother’s Day, hang up and take a bunch of pills.
It was impulsive and yet and the same time I lied to Marc when I walked out his door for the next to the last time and told him I was safe when I knew it wasn’t true. It kind of became a thing the last few weeks…verbally contracting for safety. To my “credit,” I did call him later and told him I lied…but that I was OK. It’s not like he didn’t know I was constantly counting my Prozac leading up to what happened. I told him. My guess is I figured if I talked about it, it might prevent me from actually doing anything about it.
Seven years later I have no clue what I feel about it. Part of the time I am really glad I snapped out of it because there are things the last seven years I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Part of the time I could kick myself for snapping out of it and absolutely wish if I hadn’t carried it out then that I would have in 2003.
It hasn’t 100% occupied my thoughts and I am still not sure if I feel regret about not doing enough to kill myself that day or not. You’d think I’d have more to say this far removed from the whole thing…but I don’t.
The other anniversary is Thursday. It will have been seven years since my last session with Marc. I guess that is where I regret a lot of things…mainly for really clamming up for almost five months. Not that I didn’t talk in that time…but the day he told he’d be leaving we might as well have quit seeing him then. He knew how absolutely devastated I was, he knew that I couldn’t deal with it and, for better or worse, he allowed me to rely on the written word to tell him all that. The second he tried to bring the subject up I would shut down. Stupid and immature I know…but I didn’t know how to handle it. I still maintain telling me 5 months before the fact was not the smartest thing to do and I would love to know his thinking.
I really try and not paint that time all nice and rosy because it wasn’t. There were days I pretty much plopped down on the couch and simply wanted to sleep because I was exhausted. I guess the no food and at times exercising my head off will do that to a person. I remember once he told me that was OK and if I needed to sleep I could sleep…but really couldn’t do that and have him watch me sleep for an hour! I ended up in the ER pretty much once a month the whole time I saw him for one reason or another. When he suggested meds the evaluation I went through at Kaiser was awful. I put him off for months and after what happened, I probably should have kept blowing the suggestion off!
But, for all the “red flags” that supposedly were there (according to my therapist when I went to Remuda the first time)…there are a few things that I will be eternally grateful for:
1. He took me on when even though I told him I was pretty much forced to be there and was only about 30% sure I wanted to be there.
2. He didn’t expect me to give up any behaviors until I was ready. This may have been not such a good thing, but didn’t seem any different than what my friends’ therapists were doing. Obviously the goal is to stop, but at that point, there would have been no way I could have stopped. I managed around 12 days (in a row) at one point, but that was it.
3. He instinctively knew when I needed a call. There were a few occasions where I hadn’t called him (hadn’t needed to really) and he called me. The two times that stand out are before the icky evaluation at Kaiser. I was really anxious and about 11 PM my phone rings. Considering I wasn’t falling asleep until 2 or 3 in the morning it figures it was the one night I fell asleep early! Just before he left to go out of town Easter 2000 he told me not to isolate. My car was in the shop and so that really impacted what I could do and where I could go except for Easter stuff with Gina’s family. Over the weekend he called me from wherever he and his family were for Easter to check up on me.
You’d think seven years later I’d be over it. It’s been a long time and I wouldn’t trade Rob for anything. In fact, the last couple years the date has come in gone and I have thought about it, but it hasn’t had me on edge, anxious, shaky…whatever it is that’s going on.
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